[Nettime-bold] Iraq Under Siege

["Biswanath Halder" <halder@bigfoot.com>]

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           Over the last eleven years, United States-manipulated and
        United Nations-imposed economic sanctions -- and massive
        bombings by the United States and the United Kingdom -- have
        claimed the lives of 1.5 million people in Iraq.  Most of the
        victims are children under the age of five.  The damage to
        infrastructure resulting from bombings and economic sanctions
        has left this once prosperous nation crippled and dying.  The
        combined effect of these actions has been devastating: hyper-
        inflation, massive disease proliferation in both people and
        animals, mass migration, chronic malnutrition, extreme poverty,
        increased crime, collapse of medical services, collapse of
        agriculture, collapse of water and sewage processing, increased
        reliance on the state.  The list is endless.

           In March 1999, a special United Nations Security Council
        panel reported, "The gravity of the humanitarian situation of
        the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated."
        Iraq, the report states, has "experienced a shift from relative
        affluence to massive poverty."  Prior to the imposition of
        sanctions, Iraq's health care system was regarded as among the
        best in the Middle East.  Today, however, children die from
        epidemics of once preventable diseases.  The special Security
        Council panel also reported that "the infant mortality rates in
        Iraq today are among the highest in the world."  The US
        government actively supports sanctions to prevent the production
        of "weapons of mass destruction," while itself remaining the
        world's largest producer, distributor, and user of weapons of
        mass destruction.

           Condemned by Pope John Paul II, this undeclared war by
        insidious means is not only immoral but also illegal by
        standards of international and US law.  The embargo directly
        violates the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, the Constitution
        of the World Health Organization, the Universal Declaration of
        Human Rights, and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of
        States.  Furthermore, according to US law, the blockade of the
        Iraqi people is also an act of international terrorism.

           All compassionate and rational people should oppose the
        inhuman policies of the US and the UK against Iraq.  Let us send
        a loud and clear message to them to end the eleven-year-long
        siege.  Please sign the petitions at the following URL:

        http://junior.apk.net/~halder/poll.html

        A. Petition to Stop the Sanctions and Bombing Against Iraq

        B. Petition to the British Parliament (at the Mariam Appeal)

        C. End the Iraqi Sanctions (to the UN/US/UK Administrations)

        D. Petition to the UN Security Council
           Addressing the Humanitarian Situation in Iraq


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